Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Sheilbh]

I really hope it will be as. Ig a flop as the first phase. One of the few correct things Johnson said is that Putin must be seen to fail and fail big.

Yep. It was striking in the early days but I totally agree with his line that Putin needs to fail and be seen to fail. There can't be a Minsk III here.

It's on our countries in the West to provide whatever support we can and they need for Ukraine to do it.

[Legbiter]

The Ukrainians sound convinced the second phase of the war, Russia's east-focused offensive has started.

I really hope it will be as. Ig a flop as the first phase. One of the few correct things Johnson said is that Putin must be seen to fail and fail big.

Yeah.

[Darth Wagtaros]

They're Orks.  This is all the hallmarks of a Waaaaargh!. For fucksakes, just look at their aircraft carrier.

[viper37]

I think we need to define what it means to be human, or at least what we figuratively mean when we talk about it.  I doubt that humans instinctively have aversion to treating whoever they classify as "others" very poorly, rape and genocide is the rule rather than the exception in animal kingdom, and I see no reason why human instincts evolved in the opposite direction.  When monkeys fight for resources, the winners don't put the losers in POW camps, and for the vast majority of history, neither did humans.

I think that what it means to be human is to set up and follow complex systems designed to counteract certain natural instincts, or to educate ourselves to the point where these instincts are blunted out of existence.  By setting up these systems and enforcing them, we make everyone better off.  One loses more by being murdered than one gains from murdering someone else, so collectively we're better off if we stick to not murdering each other.  People who wantonly rape and murder may physically be human species, but they certainly aren't adhering to the system that made human species a unique exception.

For the vast majority of history, human beings didn't see one another as equals.  Romans looked at the others as their inferiors, and captives were either killed or sold to slavery.  Vikings believed themselves superior to Saxons and Franks.  Hence, no reason to treat prisoners or civilians with any kind of dignity, and none was expected in return.

But it is irrelevent to current events, in a post WWII world and system of belief as taught in occidental cultures.

[Admiral Yi]

Question for those triggered by orcs: does that mean we need to stop calling people trolls too? 

[Malthus]

Question for those triggered by orcs: does that mean we need to stop calling people trolls too? 

Apparently, there are also self-described "elves" fighting Russian trolls:

https://time.com/6155060/lithuania-russia-fighting-disinformation-ukraine/

Together with "Orcs", collectively we are, slowly but surely, re-creating the entire Tolkien legendarium in real-life ... 

[The Brain]

They're Orks.  This is all the hallmarks of a Waaaaargh!. For fucksakes, just look at their aircraft carrier.

So they're not orcs?

[Eddie Teach]

You're an Orque.

[celedhring]

Looks like Spain's president is getting added to the queue of foreign dignataries going to Kyiv to meet Zelenski.

I wonder if Russia will eventually make an "oopsie" and bomb something in Kyiv while somebody's visiting.

[jimmy olsen]

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Zeihan's predictions may end up Bring true, given that much of the world's fertilizer seems to come from the same region.

[Sheilbh]

And I believe most Russian grain is shipped through the Black Sea so also very disrupted.

From what I read - Matt Zeitlin did a really interesting deep dive into this - this doesn't mean there isn't enough grain. But it's going to take a huge amount of supply chain re-jigging globally and that will be difficult, expensive and complicated (with many moving parts).

[The Larch]

And I believe most Russian grain is shipped through the Black Sea so also very disrupted.

From what I read - Matt Zeitlin did a really interesting deep dive into this - this doesn't mean there isn't enough grain. But it's going to take a huge amount of supply chain re-jigging globally and that will be difficult, expensive and complicated (with many moving parts).

It is something that is already producing unrest in several countries, according to the article I posted yesterday. The war has already been linked to protests in Perú, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and as the graph shows many African countries might soon follow suit (Egypt seems particulary vulnerable), as well as some in the Middle East and SE Asia.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Time to close the Med, just in case

[Berkut]

That seems odd to refer to them all as orcs then, doesn't it?

Very, very odd.  Let's go beat up who ever is doing that.

But this is kind of moot isn't it?  Since you're saying not a single one can be called an orc?

I cannot think of a single example in this thread of anyone referring to any specific Russian as an orc, but rather referring to them all as orcs.

You seem to have this exactly turned around.

War has a way of bringing on collective responsibility and consequences, it's a rule rather than the exception.  You don't see individuals, you just see people wearing an enemy uniform.  If someone on your side pretends to surrender, but then blows himself up to take some of the enemy with him for the last time, then the future POW candidates are going to pay the price for that, even though almost by definition they weren't the individuals committing the perfidy. 

When you wear a uniform, the actions of the other people wearing the same uniform in a way become your own actions.  As a soldier, the only thing you can do to protect yourself from collective punishment is to hold whoever you can on your side accountable, to the extent that you can.

All true.

But none of that excusing anyone from acting in a sane manner. Even if some POW blows up your buddies, that doesn't mean you have license to simply execute every POW you see as a matter of course - at least it doesn't give you moral license to do so. It likely doesn't even give you legal license, although I don't think we are really talking about legality here.

And bullshit like creating handy de-humanizing labels for our enemies is the exact way to help make it easy to lump everyone together so you can de-humanize your treatment of them and feel ok about it. There is no upside to this, IMO.

If some Japanese soldier pretends to surrender, and then drops a grenade and kills some people, then you are morally justified in shooting the next one that even appears to try that, generally. It doesn't give you license to simply shoot a POW who clearly does not have a grenade, because that other "Nip" did it - or you heard about some other "Nip" doing it. It doesn't give you license to just assume that those "Nips" who appear to be civilians probably have grenades to, so maybe we should just shoot them to be sure, and they aren't really people anyway, so who cares?

I know Yi and others will respond that they are not saying that is ok - I am not trying to create a strawman here. What I am saying is that this kind of emotive labelling has consequences. The men who butchered something like 500 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai didn't do so because they happened to somehow get a hundred psycopaths into Charlie Company. They did so because they had been subject to this kind of messaging combined with having suffered nearly thirty casualties to mines and booby traps. They convinced themselves that all the damn Vietnamese were the same, that none of them were worthy of consideration as humans, and all were just threats. 

The fact is that they were not wrong - they had lost nearly 30 men to mines and booby trapped villages. The Viet Cong had abused the rules of war to target them. Does that make it ok? Of course not. 

But it is necessary to create the environment where the enemy is no longer afforded human status in order to create the conditions for atrocity. The fact that the enemy engages in atrocity doesn't make it ok for everyone to do so, and we should not champion the processes by which we know makes that more likely.

I am really surprised we are even having this as an argument. It seems very obvious to me that creating slurs to dehumanize anyone is a terrible thing to do as a matter of principle. Arguments that amount to "But they deserve it!" are missing the point entirely.